1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a printing apparatus and to a method of producing multiple sets of printed paper forms. In one of its aspects, the invention relates to paper having a nonrepeating series with sequentially repeating color borders, as for example, bingo forms.
2. Description of Related Art
There are many applications in which it is desirable to print multiple sets of sheets of paper having a series of images printed thereon and collating the paper so that a nonrepeating sequence of multiple images is created. An example of such an application is the printing of paper sheets into packets for use in playing the game BINGO.
The traditional bingo game is a game of chance in which players are given a sheet of paper with one or more bingo face matrices of five vertical columns and five horizontal rows. Each bingo face has one letter of the word BINGO located at the top of each vertical column with a 5.times.5 matrix of numbers below the letters. Five numbers, randomly selected between 1 and 15 are located beneath the letter B; five randomly selected numbers between 16 and 30 are located beneath the letter I; five randomly selected numbers between 31 and 45 are located beneath the letter N; five randomly selected numbers between 46 and 60 are located beneath the letter G; and five randomly selected numbers between 61 and 75 are located beneath the letter O. To start the game, a bingo caller randomly selects balls numbered 1 through 75, calling out the selected numbers. The bingo game proceeds by the caller successively, randomly selecting a bingo ball and calling out the appropriate number. Once a player has numbers on his or her game card which have been called and which create a predetermined configuration, this player yells "Bingo" and wins the game.
Traditionally, a single bingo face was printed on a thick durable paper or cardboard. These cards were known as "hard cards" with one face on each card. However, hard cards are falling out of favor for several reasons and are slowly being replaced by "paper" cards or bingo sheets. Bingo sheets are typically printed on newsprint or similar paper and have multiple bingo faces printed on each bingo sheet, typically eighteen, twenty-four or thirty-six. The bingo sheets are generally sold in packets containing multiple sheets to the bingo players as the bingo players enter the bingo hall. Each sheet of the packet is used for a separate bingo game during the evening. The player plays all of the bingo faces on the first sheet for the first game and marks the sheets with an ink marker bottle or ink "dauber" as the numbers are called. Once a winner is declared, the game is over and the player merely removes the top sheet from the packet and plays the next game on the next adjacent sheet. The marked sheet is discarded.
The packets are typically arranged so that each succeeding bingo sheet has a different border color or design so the bingo caller can readily determine if the players are playing the proper sheet for the current game. The different colors are also used to identify special games.
If two or more players obtain a winning "Bingo" at the same time, then the allocated prize will be divided up amongst all of the several winners. A bingo hall will generally be more successful if it awards larger prizes to the winning players. One way to avoid paying multiple small prizes is to ensure that only one person wins each game. A single winner for each game can be achieved by selling a series of game packets in which no bingo face of a particular combination of numbers appears on more than one sheet for each game. Therefore, each bingo sheet is preferably printed as a set or series of predetermined nonrepeating bingo faces.
A commonly used series is the 9000 series. A 9000 series indicates that the bingo sheets contain 9000 nonrepeating bingo faces. If each bingo sheet has 18 faces per sheet, a 9000 series will have 500 sheets providing for up to 500 players to play a single game before the faces are repeated. Other common series include the 1,500, 1,800, 3,000, 4,500, 6,000, 18,000 and 27,000 series. Bingo halls select an appropriate series for the anticipated number of players to ensure that there is only one winner per game.
Previous printing apparatuses and methods for creating nonrepeating series of bingo packets required that the bingo packets be formed from printing the entire series of bingo faces with a single border color and storing the entire colored series. After the desired number of different colored series are printed and stored, the bingo sheets are subsequently collated in packets and fastened together as a packet by a suitable adhesive or fastener. The independently printed series were typically collated by hand collating, mechanical sheet collating or roll collating. Hand collation requires the storing of the printed bingo sheets for each series and then hand-picking a sheet from each series to form a packet. Hand collation is labor intensive and adds significantly to the cost of the packets of bingo sheets.
Roll collating requires the bingo sheets to be left uncut on a paper roll after printing, each series being contained on a separate roll. The several rolls are then mounted onto a roll collator, which arranges the sheets of each roll in overlying registration. The sheets are then cut from the rolls, stacked and glue is applied to one edge of the stacks to form the packets. The roll collating method is disadvantageous because of the expense of keeping rolls of printed bingo sheets in stock, the expense of the collating machine necessary for collating the sheets and because the collating machine is limited as to the number of rolls it can accept, thus, limiting the number of sheets that can be collated per packet.
It is also known to sequentially print single face sheets on multiple paper rolls of different colors. The faces are stepped or indexed for each subsequent colored paper roll so that, when the multiple paper rolls are combined in overlying registration, the packets comprise single matrix bingo sheets with a predetermined color sequence. Such an apparatus is disclosed in the United States Patents to Barnes, U.S. Pat. No. 4,270,774, issued Jun. 2, 1981 and Dent, U.S. Pat. No. 3,998,446, issued Dec. 21, 1976.